September 13, 2018 Jenny Ridgwell

Sugar in cakes – NEA 1

For NEA 1 you need to evaluate and annotate your results. Here’s how to do it using the Nutrition Program.

Use Food Science You Can Eat to help – available again mid Sept 2023 – contact Jenny directly to buy a copy.

The Task – To discover what happens if you reduce the sugar in a sponge cake recipe.

We made cakes with full amount of 60g sugar and then did a batch with 50g, 40g, 30g.

You can evaluate the Functional properties of sugar in cakes – the purpose for which the ingredient is being used and can be linked to – its structure, nutritional value, taste, texture, appearance, shelf life.

Star profile to show evaluation of results of reducing sugar in cakes.

How to do this

Create a recipe for your sponge cake in My Recipes.
Bake and compare your cakes and then click Star Profile
Name the recipe ‘Star profile sponge cakes’.
Choose descriptors – how the cake should look and taste. The descriptors we chose were – golden, yellow sponge, open texture, moist, dry.
The Control cake was marked golden (5), yellow sponge (4), open texture (4), moist (4), dry (1) – this was our perfect cake.
Taste the cakes and mark them on the chart – tip in the +Add Taster put the name of the cake – for example, full sugar, 50g sugar.
The Nutrition Program Star Profile fills in – now you need to Evaluate the results under Evaluation – see our chart.
To get extra exam marks you can annotate the Star profile.

This shows an example of annotating a Star Profile to show what the results mean.

Task

Compare the nutrition of sweeteners for cakes and desserts – use for experiments changing the types of sweetener used in cakes and desserts.

We are told to reduce the amount of ‘free sugars’ in our food, especially cakes and desserts.

But how easy is this to do and how much sugar is found in ingredients used for sweetening?

Compare the sugar content of different ingredients

To do

Use the Nutrition Program for this investigation.

Click My Recipes, +New Recipe and call it Sugar Investigation.

You want to find ingredients that you can use to sweeten cakes and the amount of sugar they contain in 100g

Find Ingredient

Type sugar and see the list. Tip – put a comma after sugar, then more appear. Some are lower sugar products.

Also choose fruits and vegetables which can be used to sweeten such as prunes and figs.

My choice

Sugar

Sugar, half spoon

Hermesetas, granulated sweetener

Banana

These are the results from the Nutrition Program

Nutrition of sugar

Nutrition of half spoon

Nutrition of Hermesetas

Nutrition of banana

Sweetening ingredient	Sugar in 100g
Sugar	105 g
Sugar, half spoon	99 g
Hermesetas, granulated sweetener	14 g
Banana	21 g

For Investigations, you need to make the cakes and find out how the results look and taste.

Then you can decide which sweeteners are the best.

Star profile of sugar in cakes with annotation

October 12, 2017 Jenny Ridgwell

Using Nutrition Program for AQA Eduqas OCR Food Preparation and Nutrition

Download for free the 3 resources for Food Preparation and Nutrition GCSE

We’ve written 3 resources for each exam board to show how to use the Nutrition Program for

Food Investigation NEA Task 1

Food Preparation NEA Task 2

Teaching the subject content.

AQA and Nutrition Program

October 3, 2017 Jenny Ridgwell

Gluten in flour and bread

For this investigation I tested lots of flours including Pasta Flour called 00.

First I made some gluten balls by mixing 150g flour with water to make a dough then washing out the starch.

Flours make different sized gluten balls which are then baked.

Next I made small loaves of bread from each flour making sure I made each loaf in the same way and the same size.

Then I carried out a fair test to compare the breads and make my evaluations.

Flours used for bread making

I used The Nutrition Program to present the results of the tasting. This is how it is done.

Click My Recipes and name one as Gluten Bread Test.

Put in the basic bread recipe in Ingredients.

Go to Star Profile.

Star profile for gluten testing

For each Taster put in the name of the flours – Strong, V strong, Pasta 00, Plain

Then think of Descriptors for sensory appraisal – your tasting work.

I’ve chosen firm dough, light texture, firm crust, well risen.

Then tasted the breads and given each a mark out of 5 where 0= not and 5= very.

This is a new function added for NEA 1 test – Click Hide Rating.

I can now see the Star Profile with each bread tasted.

Then I can write my Evaluations.

Then Download as JPG.

Full marks I hope!!

Star profile gluten in bread with Evaluations – full marks!!

September 26, 2017 Jenny Ridgwell

Egg whites and foams for meringues NEA 1

Liquid egg white used for meringue tests to discover what ingredients can be added

I’ve been doing more egg experiments this time with egg whites.

Have been using Liquid Egg white to save wasting so many eggs as there have been lots of tests to do.

The advantage of using Liquid Egg is that I can measure the egg white to use to experiment. My egg whites from eggs measured different amounts in millilitres so I had to beat some together then measure the same amount for experiments.

Use my book Food Science You Can Eat for more help – available mid September 2023 as download – contact Jenny.